The Yom Kippur War is the greatest military victory achieved by a country in the last hundred years. So how did it become established in the public mind that we lost?
No country has been able to win on its own in a surprise war between two armies that surpass it in every quantitative and qualitative parameter. After three years of a severe war of attrition, the IDF forces found themselves facing not only the armies of Egypt and Syria, but also an enormous amount of armaments supplied to them by the USSR, then the largest power in the world alongside the USA.
Israel, on the other hand, experienced a terrible betrayal from France, which refused to provide the tools it promised. Britain, which had pledged to supply modern tanks of the ‘Chieftain’ model, also folded following the pressure of the Arab countries. The relationship between Israel and the USA was in no way similar to what we know today. President Nixon was furious with the American Jews following the pressure they exerted to prevent a rapprochement with Moscow as long as the Jews of the USSR were not allowed to cross the Iron Curtain, and this also affected the willingness to help Israel.
Contrary to the lies that are spread every year in the Israeli media and in the history books, Israel really did not ‘reject’ any initiative for peace agreements. On the contrary, Israel sent through an American envoy a proposal to withdraw from the canal line and even from all Chinese territory in exchange for a peace treaty. This was testified by Israel’s ambassador to the US at the time, the late Yitzhak Rabin, followed by the ambassador Simcha Dinitz, who served in the post during the war. The Egyptian response was a demand for a complete withdrawal to the lines of June 4, 1967, without a promise of a peace agreement, but only as a precondition for the existence of negotiations.
The intelligence and political failure was indeed manifested in the form of the combined attack, in the midst of Yom Kippur, which caught the leadership of Israel and the leadership of the security forces by complete surprise.
Despite all this, within 48 hours the IDF forces had already managed to penetrate into Syrian territory, and by the end of the war had reached a distance of 40 kilometers from Damascus. In the Egyptian sector, our forces managed to defeat the Egyptian army within a week of the outbreak of the war in an armor-on-armor battle that is considered one of the largest in its scope ever. A day later, the IDF managed to cross the canal, under heavy fire. Our forces surrounded the Third Army, and reached a distance of 101 km from Cairo. Egypt concentrated its best forces to defend the capital, out of real fear for the fate of the country.
The war ended in a crushing victory, forcing Egypt and Syria to give up all their preliminary demands. The cease-fire agreement was signed without retreating to the 67 lines, and eventually succeeded in bringing Israel and the US closer together. Israel received a security status and a deterrent that remains to this day: from then until today, no Arab country has dared to start fighting against Israel, in clear recognition of our military power.
Despite this, many series and books focus mainly on the intelligence failure. The series ‘Lockdown’ mainly dealt with this omission and the first hours of fighting in the northern sector, and did not show the scoring on the Syrian side at all. The documentary series ‘The Land Will Not Be Quiet’ also created a similar focus on the failure and the first and difficult days, but did not present an equal view of the military and political achievements as a result of the war.
The war started 49 years ago, but we still feel its results today. On the one hand, a media elite that has completely lost faith in the IDF forces and their ability to decide the war, and since then almost exclusively preaches dangerous withdrawals. On the other hand, the majority of the people know how to cherish the bravery of the fighters, support the settlement project that gained momentum following the war, and are very proud of the military and political achievements that arose as a result of it.
On this day we are proud to be Jews and Israelis. We unite with the memory of the thousands of dead and wounded and the hundreds of captives who were tortured in Egyptian and Syrian captivity. They fought bravely, in battles unknown since World War II in their scale, and have not repeated themselves on any international scale since then. Israel Lives.
Matan Asher is the spokesman for the If You Will movement